List of Common Misconceptions

The word “the­ory” in “the the­ory of evol­u­tion” does not imply doubt in main­stream sci­ence about the valid­ity of this the­ory; the words “the­ory” and “hypo­thes­is” are not the same in a sci­entif­ic con­text (see Evol­u­tion as the­ory and fact). A sci­entif­ic the­ory is a set of prin­ciples which, via logic­al deduc­tion, explains the obser­va­tions in nature. The same logic­al deduc­tions can be made to pre­dict obser­va­tions before they are made. The the­ory describ­ing how evol­u­tion occurs is a “the­ory” in the same sense as the the­ory of grav­ity or the the­ory of relativ­ity.